Kas on kerge olla noor?
This true story about young people in Latvia shook up Soviet society in 1987.
There is nothing left to fight for, to die for and to live for, proclaims Juris, a secondary school student, with a frankness that shocked bureaucrats and signalled the beginning of great changes. It speaks of lost ideals, of how hard it is for young people to find their place in a society that is stagnant, hypocritical and full of lies.
The film, made from the point of view of young people themselves, brought millions of people to the cinema and filled newspaper columns with fierce controversy. Only one documentary had previously been so popular – Mihhail Romm’s “Triumph Over Violence” from 20 years earlier.
The author of the film, Juris Podnieks, died tragically a few years later and the follow-up films – “Is It Easy to Be?“ and “Is It Easy“ were made by his colleagues.
An absolute pinnacle of Latvian filmmaking, restored in 2023.
Tiit Tuumalu
Juris Podnieks (1950-1992) was one of the most important documentary filmmakers in Latvian film history, gaining widespread recognition as a documentarian of the collapse of the Soviet Union. His best-known film is “Is It Easy to Be Young?”, which attracted millions of viewers in Soviet cinemas and was screened in more than 80 foreign countries. In 1991, he captured the bloody events in Riga, when Soviet special forces attacked the Latvian Ministry of the Interior, killing cameramen Andris Slapinš and Gvido Zvaigzne. This was the subject of the film “Post scriptum”, dedicated to their memory.
Strēlnieku zvaigznājs (Küti tähtkuju,1982), Veļ Sīzifs akmeni (Veereb Sisyphose kivi, 1985), Vai viegli būt jaunam? (Kas on kerge olla noor? 1986)